As of Wednesday, the Burmese democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi will have spent a total of 20 years in detention in Myanmar, five of them since her government was overthrown by a military coup in February 2021. Almost nothing is known about her state of health or the conditions she is living in, although she is presumed to be held in a military prison in the capital Nay Pyi Taw. For all I know, she could be dead, her son Kim Aris said last month, although a spokesman for the ruling military junta insisted she is in good health.
She has not seen her lawyers for at least two years, nor is she known to have seen anyone else except prison personnel. After the coup, she was given jail sentences totalling 27 years on what are widely viewed as fabricated charges.
Yet despite her disappearance from public view, she still casts a long shadow over Myanmar. There are repeated calls for her release, along with appeals to the generals to end their ruinous campaign against the armed opposition and negotiate an end to the civil war that has now dragged on for five years. The military has tried to remove her once ubiquitous image; you still see faded posters of The Lady, or Amay Su, Mother Su, as she is affectionately known, in tucked away corners. Could she still play a role in settling the conflict between the soldiers and the people of Myanmar?
After all, it has happened before. Back in 2010, the military had been in power for nearly 50 years, brutally crushed all opposition, and run the economy into the ground. Just as it is doing now, it organised a general election which excluded Aung San Suu Kyi's popular National League for Democracy, and which it ensured its own proxy party, the USDP, would win. The 15 years Aung San Suu Kyi was detained after 1989 were very different from the conditions she is being held in today. Her dignified, non-violent resistance won her admirers across Myanmar and around the world.
Today, she is invisible. Her long-held belief in non-violent struggle has been rejected by those who have joined the armed resistance. There is a lot more criticism of how Aung San Suu Kyi governed when she was in power than before. At the age of 80, with uncertain health, it is not clear how much influence she would have, were she to be released. Yet her long struggle against military rule made her synonymous with the hopes of a freer, more democratic future. There is simply no one else of her stature in Myanmar, and for that reason alone, many argue she is still needed if the country is to chart a path out of its current deadlock.
She has not seen her lawyers for at least two years, nor is she known to have seen anyone else except prison personnel. After the coup, she was given jail sentences totalling 27 years on what are widely viewed as fabricated charges.
Yet despite her disappearance from public view, she still casts a long shadow over Myanmar. There are repeated calls for her release, along with appeals to the generals to end their ruinous campaign against the armed opposition and negotiate an end to the civil war that has now dragged on for five years. The military has tried to remove her once ubiquitous image; you still see faded posters of The Lady, or Amay Su, Mother Su, as she is affectionately known, in tucked away corners. Could she still play a role in settling the conflict between the soldiers and the people of Myanmar?
After all, it has happened before. Back in 2010, the military had been in power for nearly 50 years, brutally crushed all opposition, and run the economy into the ground. Just as it is doing now, it organised a general election which excluded Aung San Suu Kyi's popular National League for Democracy, and which it ensured its own proxy party, the USDP, would win. The 15 years Aung San Suu Kyi was detained after 1989 were very different from the conditions she is being held in today. Her dignified, non-violent resistance won her admirers across Myanmar and around the world.
Today, she is invisible. Her long-held belief in non-violent struggle has been rejected by those who have joined the armed resistance. There is a lot more criticism of how Aung San Suu Kyi governed when she was in power than before. At the age of 80, with uncertain health, it is not clear how much influence she would have, were she to be released. Yet her long struggle against military rule made her synonymous with the hopes of a freer, more democratic future. There is simply no one else of her stature in Myanmar, and for that reason alone, many argue she is still needed if the country is to chart a path out of its current deadlock.
